This monumental painting was acquired by the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and was the star of the Evening Sale of Master Paintings auction which fetched $53.5. The Master Week sales continues with the auctions Master Drawings e The Road to Rome.
After captivating the visitors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York over the past two years, the Danae by Orazio Gentileschi was purchased by the J. Paul Getty Museum for a record $30.5 million.
This masterpiece is one of the most important Baroque paintings offered on the international market from the post-war period to today.
The painting was commissioned in 1621 by the Genoese nobleman Giovanni Antonio Sauli for his palace in Genoa; this extraordinary oil on canvas (161.3 x 226.7 cm) immortalizes a scene from the myth of Danae: the beautiful daughter of King Acrisius of Argos is locked up in a secret room to prevent any seductive contact with the male world. This applies to mortals but not to Jupiter who materializes in a divine metamorphosis – in love with the girl – in a rain of gold coins.
Jupiter's arrival is announced by Cupid – who, pulling aside the curtain – reveals the seductive beauty of Danae.
The Sauli Series represents one of the most important commissions entrusted to Orazio Gentileschi and also includes the famous Penitent Magdalene now in a private New York collection, Lot and the Daughters preserved in the Getty Museum in Malibu.
Forefather and master of the Baroque, Orazio Gentileschi (Pisa 1563 - London 1639) began his career in Rome working in close contact with the Italian and foreign artists of the capital and in particular was seduced by the works of Caravaggio.
He passed on his art and pictorial mastery to his formidable painter daughter Artemisia Gentileschi.
The painting at auction shows Gentileschi's extraordinary skill in painting all the shades of light and the refinements of beauty: silk, linen and metals are combined in such a way as to offer us a sumptuous composition and one of the finest examples of early seventeenth-century painting.
True masterpiece in Gentileschi's production, Danae it is one of the most important Baroque paintings presented at auction in recent decades.
